Developing our Climate Emergency Response Plan

The Climate Emergency Response Plan sets three ambitious targets to achieve over the next ten years:

1. Our community’s electricity consumption will be matched by a 100% renewable electricity supply by 2025
2. Our community’s energy needs will be matched by a 100% renewable energy supply by 2027
3. Our community will have transitioned to a Zero Carbon Community by 2031.

These targets will be achieved by working on 49 action items across the following eight pillars:

1. Wadawurrung country, cultural heritage and values 
2. Renewable energy
3. Sustainable buildings
4. Sustainable transport
5. Mobilisation, education and collaboration
6. Adaptation and resilience
7. Consumption and waste
8. Environmental regeneration.

The actions that sit under these pillars will be reviewed by Council every two years. At the five year mark, a major review of the full plan will take place.

Click here to read the full plan(PDF, 3MB), including the details of all 49 action items.

Many of the 49 action items within the plan include opportunities for local residents to take part. The full list of action items in Council's Climate Emergency Response Plan(PDF, 3MB) contains icons that indicate which actions will be led by or involve local residents.

Where Council is leading a project that includes community input, we'll make announcements beforehand to let residents know how to get involved.

Over a three-week period in October 2020, 346 respondents participated in an online survey as part of the initial engagement stage in the development of the Borough of Queenscliffe’s Climate Emergency Response Plan. 12 primary school students from the Borough of Queenscliffe area also participated in a workshop.

These early engagements were an opportunity to gain a general understanding of the Borough community’s priorities for the development of a Climate Emergency Response Plan. The results of this survey were presented to a panel of community members, who used the data collected to shape and inform the draft response plan.

Here's a quick summary of what we heard from the community:

Survey respondents were significantly concerned about the impacts of climate change, and are primarily motivated to reduce its impacts on people (including future generations) and the natural environment of the Borough. School students also expressed a desire to be active participants in a climate emergency response.

Renewable energy investment was consistently the most popular project suggestion with both survey respondents and school students. This project suggestion ranked highly in both prompted and unprompted responses, and regardless of who was taking responsibility for the action (both Council-led and community-led renewable energy initiatives were highly popular). Changes to waste management and behaviour also ranked highly for both groups among suggested actions.

Survey respondents also tended to feel the plan should be ambitious, setting targets for Council and the community to become zero-carbon within a decade.

To read the full results of both the survey and the workshop, download a copy of the full results report(PDF, 2MB).

A community panel was randomly selected from applicants. The panel considered a range of inputs, including the results from the first stage of consultation, before considering the pillars, goals and actions that should be included in the Climate Emergency Response Plan.

The draft CERP released to the public reflects the actions and goals set out by this group.